Grey Tide In The East

by Andrew J. Heller

  The Austrian private was neither surprised at the obvious squalor and poverty of the Polish settlement, nor dismayed at having to bivouac in such a dismal place. It was only to be expected that the Poles would live like pigs, he thought. It was in their natures. Where the other men griped about being quartered in the little shiessbloch of a town, the Austrian saw nothing to complain about except being forced to wait for another opportunity to meet the enemy in action.

  The transfer of the 6th Division had been conducted in a frantic rush to get the unit in position in time to join the big offensive in the East. The scuttlebutt was that this offensive was going to round up most of the Russian Army north of the Carpathians in an immense battle of envelopment, and possibly knock Russia right out of the war. As might be expected, in the mad scramble of the movement, equipment had been left behind, with the losses discovered only when the division had finally settled in its new slot in the line southeast of the provincial capital of Russian Poland. The Regiment’s entire supply of extra soles for their boots had gone missing, along with all the rest of the cobbler’s supplies, including all the waterproof boot polish, among other things. The worst blow was the disappearance of all of the replacement barrels for the 6th Company’s machine guns. (The Maxim was an excellent weapon in many ways, but its weakness was a tendency for the barrels to overheat and warp if the gunners were obliged to fire continuously without giving the guns a chance to cool off, which often happened in combat.) Without the spare barrels, the company’s machine guns would be out of action in short order if there were heavy fighting.

  During the transfer, the men were crammed together like cattle on troop trains for three days, with a short break to change trains at the Russian border where the German standard gauge tracks ended and the Russian wide-gauge began. They were then marched over the muddy trails that passed for roads in Poland, slogging on through the night in the rain without stopping for sleep or food. They kept on their feet by cramming down dry bread and stale cheese and washing these “meals” down with schnapps. The division arrived exhausted but on schedule, only to discover that the big show had been postponed until the weather cleared and the roads had a chance to dry. The rain, which had been bad enough in central Poland where the List Regiment was travelling, had been torrential in the north. The whole insane hurry, the ghastly train ride followed by the forced marches in the rain, had all been for nothing.

  It drove the Austrian nearly mad having to listen to his comrades complaining about trivial matters such as wet feet from leaky boots and lost uniforms. Even worse, they made disloyal comments about their superiors, calling them “paper-shuffling General Staff arschloch” and the like, and that incompetents in Berlin had put them through an idiotic rush-rush for no reason. Did they not understand the importance of the work in which they were all engaged, opening new, fertile land to the Aryan race and driving off the subhuman Poles and Slavs that had formerly occupied it?

  Still less could he understand why the regimental officers blithely ignored all the defeatist grumbling, disloyal criticisms of superior officers up to the General Staff, and even scurrilous comments and jokes… jokes!… about the Kaiser himself.

  Although he knew that it would accomplish nothing, the Austrian was so incensed that he had asked his company commander why the officers were allowing the enlisted men to commit what the former saw as nothing short of treason. As usual, Captain Schmidt had not taken him seriously.

  “They’re not committing treason, Private,” Schmidt told him in a soothing tone, as though he was talking to a child. “They’re just blowing off a little steam. I have no doubt that Julius Caesar’s men acted much the same way when they were routed out of comfortable camps and marched off in the rain to fight wild Gauls. Such idle chatter means nothing,” the Captain continued. “I do not believe it is defeatist, and I do not think that the chatter will have any effect on morale or fighting spirit in the company or the Regiment. These are your comrades, brave soldiers, good men and loyal Germans, one and all.” The Captain tactfully refrained from pointing out the Austrian was technically not a German at all, having been born in Hapsburg Empire. “They are as good, brave and loyal as you. I’ll take good care to monitor the men’s morale, Private. All you’ll have to worry about is killing Ivan. So what do you say we just forget about this whole business and get on with the war?” he concluded, looking at the Austrian encouragingly.

  The Austrian was disappointed by the Company Commander’s reaction, but not surprised. Based on his thus far brief military experience, he had expected some such answer to his complaint. Very few of the officers or men had any idea of the real meaning of the work they were doing here in the East. To them, fighting the sub-human Slavic trash was no different to fighting the comparatively pure French race.

  Of course, the Austrian had tried to educate his comrades, to explain the historical significance of their mission. Whenever there was time and a handful of the men were gathered together, he would talk to them about their duty to the Fatherland, and remind them of how fortunate they were to live in a time when they could participate in the fulfilment of Germany’s historic destiny. He shared with them his vision of a future in which the Aryan race reigned supreme over the world. He explained the danger of allowing their pure blood to be diluted by mixing with that of inferior peoples, or even worse, poisoned by the unspeakable Jew. On those rare occasions when he was not interrupted, he would then go on to describe the nature and purpose of the international Jewish-Marxist conspiracy and how it must be fought.

  Usually he was not able to get that far before he was shouted down. It hurt the Austrian when his comrades called him all sorts of names ranging from the relatively mild ones like “oddball” or “weirdo” to more the pejorative “nutcase” and “pain in the ass”. Too many good German working men had been exposed to the Socialist virus at home and were now infected. To the Austrian, it was only further proof (not that any was needed) of how far the effects of the twin Jewish poisons of Marxism and Liberalism had spread, even into the ranks of the Army!

  They could not see how fortunate they were to be born in the only true German Empire, where the Aryan race was in the overwhelming majority and had been able to keep itself reasonably pure. He had been unlucky enough to be born in the mongrel Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, which had degenerated into a racial cesspool that grew more corrupt and vile with each passing year. He would have far rather gone to prison than fight to defend his decadent homeland. That was why he had dodged the draft when he was called up by the Austrian army, not because he was afraid, why he had slipped across the border into Bavaria and, when the war broke out, petitioned King Ludwig III for permission to volunteer for service in the Bavarian Army.

  The Austrian was confident that by now no one in the entire regiment doubted his courage. He had earned his Iron Cross Second Class in combat, fearlessly exposing himself to heavy French fire while dragging his wounded platoon commander to safety. His comrades in the 6th Company might close their minds to his ideas, but there was not one of them who was not glad to see the Austrian by his side in combat. Under the circumstances, the Austrian could hardly contain his joy when, after a week in the nameless Polish village, word came down that the roads were dry enough to launch the big offensive.

  The Austrian crouched with the rest of the company in the shallow trench they had scraped out of the muddy soil, waiting for the preparatory bombardment to finish. He was impressed: this was the heaviest barrage he had seen yet. The Russian trenches were obscured by heavy smoke punctuated by gouts of flame and fountains of dirt from the shell bursts. Even from a kilometre away the waiting German soldiers could feel the earth shake under the pounding.

  When the hurricane of shelling finally ended, the 6th Company, along with the rest of the List Regiment, and the entire Third Army rose as one and moved forward, not like an army of mere men but like an irresistible force of nature, toward the East. The Austrian was a little surprised to hear the crackle of gunfir
e coming from the Russian lines. He had more than half-expected that the incredible artillery pounding would have killed any Russian foolish enough not to run away. For an instant, he wondered how such corrupted specimens of humanity had the courage to remain in position under such a bombardment to face the oncoming infantry assault, and then he concluded that like beasts they were simply too stupid to know when they were beaten.

  As he moved forward, the Austrian heard bullets whine past on either side and overhead. His flanker cried out and dropped face-first on the ground right next to him. Ahead, he now could clearly hear the unmistakable rattle of a machine gun.

  The Austrian acted almost without thinking. He threw himself into a crater from a shell that had landed short, an instant before a stream of bullets from the Russian Maxim gun sizzled over his hiding place. Slowly and carefully, he raised his head to peer over the edge of the shell hole.

  The Russian machine gun was protected by a sandbag revetment. It was being served by a crew of three brown-clad gunners, with another man pointing out targets. He waited until the crew’s attention was focused in another direction and then he slipped out of his hiding place and crawled rapidly on hands and knees through the mud until he was only a few metres from the machine gun nest, out of the view of the Russians. He lay flat on his back as another burst aimed at someone in the distance passed a few feet over his body. He pulled two small, round kugel hand grenades from his belt and laid them on the ground at his side. Then, taking the little metal sphere in his left hand, he pulled the wire that activated the black power igniter with his right. He held the now-live grenade for three long seconds, and then spun his body on the ground as he hurled it into the machine gun nest in a single motion. Without waiting for the explosion, the Austrian frantically ignited the other grenade and quickly threw it to join the first. The first grenade exploded in the middle of the gun crew while the second was still in the air. When he heard the second grenade detonate, he rolled to his feet, his rifle pointing forward, and charged the machine gun nest.

  As it turned out, he had no need for the rifle. The two kugels had killed or incapacitated all four Russians. The Maxim gun had been knocked off its tripod base, and was now lying on the ground, the barrel bent in a “v”. The Austrian suddenly felt dizzy, cold and sick. The muscles in his legs turned to water. He sank down shakily on a sandbag in the midst of the Russian corpses. The adrenaline that had driven his body to react at unnatural speed was gone, and he felt empty and weak.

  In another moment he was surrounded by his mates. They cheered him, pounded his back and told him what a demon fighter he was. He was surprised to discover that he had been wounded in the leg at some point, although he had felt nothing at the time. The wound was in the meat of his thigh and was very bloody. Only after he saw the blood soaking through the leg of his trousers did the injury begin to throb. One of his comrades cut away the bloody cloth and bandaged him up.

  He felt confused, disoriented. He tried to stand up, to re-join his comrades in the battle, but a hand gently pushed him back onto the stretcher on which he lay (when did they put him on a stretcher? he wondered foggily).

  “Relax, Private,” a voice said. “You’ve done enough fighting for one day.” The Austrian looked up to see Captain Schmidt standing over him. “Half of the company saw you take out that machine gun nest. It was the bravest thing I ever saw. I am personally going to recommend you for an Iron Cross, First Class.”

  The Austrian’s eyes widened in astonishment at this promise. The Iron Cross, First Class, was normally given only to officers and NCOs. He had never heard of it ever being awarded to a private soldier. Perhaps he had not heard the Captain correctly…

  Captain Schmidt was smiling down at him, and nodding his head. “That’s right, Private. I said the Iron Cross First Class. We will have to see about a promotion for you as well. I must catch up with the company now, but I will see you again soon.” The Captain patted the Austrian’s good leg and ordered the stretcher bearers to take him back to the battalion aid station.

  By the time he was released from the hospital to rejoin his unit, two weeks had gone by, the big offensive was over and the front had advanced thirty kilometres east of Warsaw. The offensive had been a success, he learned, dealing a heavy blow to the Russians, driving them back more than a hundred kilometres north and south of Warsaw, and capturing the capital of Russian Poland.

  The Iron Cross ceremony was impressive. The entire Regiment was drawn up to see the Austrian and two other men awarded decorations for bravery. Colonel List himself pinned the medals on the recipients. The Austrian had not quite believed that he was really going to receive the Iron Cross First Class right up to the moment when the Colonel attached it to his chest.

  Afterwards, his mates were not any more in agreement with the Austrian’s political and racial views, but they were much more polite about their disagreement. This gave him almost as much satisfaction as the medal had.

  The Captain had not forgotten about the promised promotion. The next time the 6th Company went into combat, they would have a freshly-minted lance corporal. The Austrian’s heart swelled with pride when he reflected on the honours that his homeland of choice had so generously heaped upon him, in spite of his foreign birth.

  The Austrian had always believed he was destined for greatness. Now he knew for a certainty that his destiny and that of Germany were intertwined. That night, lying on his bed of heaped straw, he decided that it was his fate to do something so important in the history of his adopted Fatherland that if all the heroes of the past could somehow be resurrected and brought out of the past, from Arminius, Aryan conqueror of the Roman legions, to Frederick the Great, founder of the modern Prussian nation, to Bismarck creator of the newest and greatest triumph of Aryan genius, the German Empire, a place would be found among them for a man born in Upper Austria in the little town of Braunau am Inn, a man named Adolf Hitler.

  Chapter Nine: WASHINGTON, D.C., OCTOBER 29, 1914

  William Jennings Bryan tilted his chair back and swivelled to look out the huge window of his office at the dome of the Capitol glittering in the afternoon sun.

  He had long ago given up any hope of being elected President, and was now beginning to think that if that job was any more aggravating than his present position as Secretary of State, it was probably just as well he had never won the office. It was not the work he found trying, it was the many demands for favours that crossed his desk. He was certain that the White House was flooded with ten times as many such requests.

  Reluctant to return to the pile of unread papers on his desk, he opened the top drawer, and pulled out a souvenir from his 1896 Presidential campaign, a newspaper editorial that he had mounted in a picture frame to preserve it.

  The editorial was from the New York Herald, a staunch Republican paper, announcing that the Herald was sponsoring a new candidate for President, a chimpanzee from the Bronx Zoo named William Grinning Organmonk. The Herald editorial writer took the position that “if the currency of the country is to be monkeyed with, our candidate is the one best qualified to do it.”

  This risible attack on Bryan’s Free Silver platform never failed to bring a smile to his face. Was bi-metalism really such a terrible idea, he wondered? He still was not convinced it was, even after all these years and three defeats at the polls.

  He shook his head, as if to clear away the old memories, sighed, and turned back to the pile of papers stacked in his “In” box.

  The first item was a letter from a Mr. Alba B. Johnson, President of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. This particular headache had been kindly forwarded to State from the Navy Department under the endorsement of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt. Bryan made a mental note to return the favour to Mr. Roosevelt sometime.

  Mr. Johnson’s letter stated that a French railroad known as the PLM had ordered two modified Class T-31 locomotives, custom-built for operations in the mountains, from his company in 1913 for delivery in
1914. Baldwin Locomotive Works had completed the machines in all particulars and a timely manner as specified by the contract, and had shipped them to the French port of Le Havre for delivery to PLM, as requested by the buyer.

  Or, rather, they had attempted to ship them to the buyer, by having them loaded aboard the freighter St. Louis bound for Le Havre. However, before the ship and its cargo had been able to reach its destination, it had been stopped by a German destroyer in the North Sea. The skipper of the German vessel (whom Johnson characterised rather harshly, Bryan thought, as “no better than a pirate”) informed the skipper of the St. Louis that the port of Le Havre, and indeed all French ports, were now officially closed by blockade on order of His Imperial Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and that they were going to remain closed to all shipping for the duration of the war. In any event, the port facilities at Le Havre were unusable at the present time, having recently been reduced to rubble after a bombardment by a squadron of battle cruisers of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet. The German captain went on to suggest that the St. Louis would do well to return with its cargo from whence it came by the shortest, fastest route available, before both ship and cargo were seized as contraband of war and put into service hauling freight for the German Empire.